Angela Loves Gonzo

It's one of those things, where certain stars come in at the right time and get the right attention to market themselves perfectly. Curvy brunette bombshell Angela White has pulled that off brilliantly, and it makes every single one of her films, like this one, a kind of event. The only downside for me is that this takes the name gonzo pretty seriously, to the point where everything is essentially shot in one take by a camera that is largely controlled by the stars. In other words, unlike those films where they just go and there's an actual camera operator, we're at the whims and angles of observation of the people on camera. That makes this a rather inconsistent experience, one made all the more frustrating by the fact that the shots from the back of the box are perhaps the best on the entire disc. A bit of technical tweaking and this could have been a masterpiece.

We open with Angela and Ramon Nomar. This is a fairly standard bedroom scene, one where they do make it a bit of a point to show off their cameras within the shot. They makes it feel more awkward to me, like we're getting two people who were alone in a room with a few thousand in camera equipment, just checking out what they were up to. It doesn't have that flow of the staged sex this surely is. Mick Blue and Annika Albrite are next, and at least we have the advantage here of more people to fill the space. It doesn't feel all quite so transactional. Though, on the other hand, the tighter camera shots and more people doesn't always blend. I constantly had the feeling I was about to bump my head on one of them.

The scene with Toni Ribas might be the best one here, though it too suffers from being POV and not trying to do enough for a better viewing experience. They both seem into it, though, and that helps. Finally there's Manuel Ferrara. One of my girlfriends is a huge fan of his, the way he does things. But this scene is entirely like one of his POV films, the only area where I'm actively disappointed in his output. The camera hangs out across the room for long stretches, then gets brought over. In other words, we're either too far away or too close for so much of it. This is an anal scene for those interested, something that's probably a selling point for Angela given her sparsity of work. This is still an event: any film that takes two discs to do four scenes clearly is. Everyone involved knows what they're doing, too. I just wish they had made a slightly different style choice to make Angela Loves Gonzo become something we could really all love. As it stands, it's still well above average and worth your shelf space.